Author: shaun tenzenmen

Australasian DIY music specialist and practising poet, amongst other things

Cave Words – 5th August 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

In a world of its own
Adjacent to meaning
In a place of potential
Thoughtful gleaning

For there lies a greater truth
Just beyond our understanding
A song has its own life
Awe and wonder in tension demanding

Vibrating words hold a promise
A metaphoric form concealed
Trusting to intuition
That someday will be revealed

Sometimes truth is too severe
To even live upon the page
So take this poetic radiance
As your courage to engage

About 90% of these words were pilfered from Nick Cave and his Red Hand Files in a response to a question about lyrical meaning.
9th May 2024 – Submitted to Weekly Prompts Wednesday Challenge – Intuition

If you kill a cockroach you are a hero, if you kill a butterfly you are bad. Morality has aesthetic standards.

Nietzsche

No Body Required – 3rd August 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

An entertainment to end all others
Viewers left zombied gibbering wrecks
Weaponised for controlling populations
Shoulders hunched until snapping necks
Bodies broken boxed in the matrix
Life supported until accounts drained
A no one dies a nobody death
Disposed and destroyed, existence unexplained

Human life is not sacred until all life is sacred to humans.

Doc Dart

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to be able to handle changing situations quickly and be able to manage my expectations.

The Week That Was – 14th October 1979

Red Lines Drawn – 2nd August 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

Crazy colonialists came
Before they left again
Revoked rights remain
Creating wars the same
Arbitrary lines drawn
To ancient enemies sworn
Peoples, ripped and torn
Nations divide in scorn

‘Freedom’ is nothing more than the leash on which we allow the masses to run. They do not want to be free.

Pat Mills (?), Third World War, Crisis Magazine

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful that Amy spent a day preparing meals for me to freeze and eat later.

The Week That Was – 7th October 1979

The Chases – 1st August 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

Even amongst all the confusion
Peace can be found in all places
Don’t fall for the constant illusion
That life is only about the chases

The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.

Oscar Wilde

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to live near enough to shops that cover about 90% of my day-to-day needs.

The Week That Was – 30th September 1979

Own Goal – 31st July 2022

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In a carefully worded statement
Facts were twisted and obscured
The lines crossed were blurred
And both sides eventually demurred
One step forward, two steps back
Holding hands, stepping into a hole
A status quo must be maintained
Until someone scores an own goal

You are a human being, not a human doing.

Ryan Holiday

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful that our little car is healthy enough to get us to Chiang Mai and back on a quick turnaround trip. Good health to you, Almy.

The Clown Interrogator – 30th July 2022

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A master manipulator
And a dreadful instigator
Loving the illusion
Causing most confusion
Winning a war of the word
Spinning til the vision is blurred
A clown interrogator
A comforting instigator
The script premeditated
Defences incinerated
Winning is all that matters
For those madder than hatters

You’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behaviour.

J.D. Salinger

A Sound Sleep – 29th July 2022

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A world of wonderland made of many pleasures
A paradise at fingertips, packed with all the treasures
The poverty of the mind, empty of all previous worries
All are sleeping soundly as death towards us hurries

To die at sixty or at eighty is harder than at ten or at thirty. Habituation to life, there’s the rub. For life is a vice – the greatest one of all. Which explains why we have so much difficulty ridding ourselves of it.

Emil Cioran

Problem N – 28th July 2022

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Too much, and thinking is affected
The past is a time still being perfected
Forever with us as a problem somehow
Living in the past instead of the now

Humanity’s state of mind has been distorted by its own bloody history.

Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to be able to enjoy falling asleep to weird interesting music. I love that feeling and sometimes reminds me of listening to John Peel as a teenager or jazz on the radio in the early hours.

Rorts and Payers – 27th July 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

Your mindless, meaningless sympathy
Does nothing for those in need
A charitable chunk of donations
Was never seen to stop the bleed
Thoughts and prayers, those empty words
Won’t disturb your life serene
Never stopped to consider your action
Won’t make your dirty hands clean
For every heartstring, there’s a scam
So that we may never be as one
The status quo has removed benevolence
And so nothing ever gets done

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

Saul Bellow

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to go to Phayao after school yesterday with a great dinner by the lake as the sun was setting. It was very relaxing.